Stationary and mobile computing devices—including cellular telephones and a range of other portable computers—include many electro-magnetic radiation-based one- and two-way wireless communication technologies, such as cellular telephone technologies, GPS, WIFI, Bluetooth, and Near-Field Communication (“NFC”). These wireless systems emit and receive electro-magnetic radiation, typically in the radio frequency bands, with various characteristics, such as signal strength and wireless channel (or frequency or frequency-block) utilization. Fixed and wireless data networks also commonly include information in the networks' bit stream such as “Media Access Control address” (“MAC address”), “Ethernet hardware address” (“EHA”), or “Physical Address,” which, generally, are unique identifiers assigned to a network interface or network node. As used herein, “Wireless Signal Information” is any radio frequency (e.g., WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC, etc.) or timing signal (e.g., Ultra-wideband or “UWB”) that is detectable by a mobile device and can be associated with a unique terminal, such as via MAC address.
Many of the wireless systems mentioned above enable communication between a first computing device and other computing devices and/or they may be used to locate the first computing device in a network or in physical space.
Systems exist which create digital images utilizing pixels and which display digital images on computing devices with pixel-based display technologies.
Many mobile computing devices now also contain one or more sensors, such as multi-axis gyros, compasses, barometers, accelerometers, microphones or other hardware or software base technologies, which technologies are used within mobile devices to detect changes in position and orientation.
However, not known are systems which determine a user's position in a pixel-based image from user interaction and from sensors and which correlate this position information with wireless signal information, the resulting information being stored and made available to other computing devices so that the other computing devices can, for example, locate themselves based on then-available wireless signal information.
Needed is a method and system to determine the position of a mobile device in a pixel-based image based on user input and sensor data, to contemporaneously receive and log wireless signal information, to correlate and store the resulting information, and to make the correlated information available to other computing devices.